[dreams|culture] My chemo-addled mind on pop culture

Weird have been my dreams of late. Ah medication and stress, those twinned servants of the entelechy of dreams.

Last night I didn’t just get a few postcards from my subconscious. I got a whole truckload 70mm CinemaScope reels shot on expired TechniColor film stock, complete with house posters and lobby standees. (Hmm, when I die, maybe I should continue going to conventions as a standee. Anyone want to take on carrying me around?)

At any rate, I enjoyed an hour long series of linked dream vignettes that was rather like watching Heavy Metal [ imdb ] by way of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle. Sturm und drang, world-ending battles, dead peasants everywhere, myself in various guises, genders and ethnic modalities struggling to save the world over and over again, and mostly losing. All the way through, I always knew that I had lost or was going to lose. People implored me to stop.

On the plus side, my late uncle-by-marriage Big Jay McMinnis made an appearance as a Cherokee centaur. That would be Big Jay as I knew him in the early seventies, loose, wild and free, before he divorced my aunt and that bitter, judgmental form of churchiness ate his brain. The younger Big Jay would have approved. The later Big Jay would have been appalled. (And no, I was not named for him, my aunt did not even meet him until some years after I was born.)

So yeah, pop culture filter through the chemo-addled brain. Another funny bit popped up yesterday as well. Many years ago, I was a happy member of the Slug Tribe writing group in Austin, Texas. We met two Tuesdays a month in a community center conveniently located not far from my then-house. The room next door to ours was occupied by a Latin dance class. They would begin dancing to Santana’s version of “Oye Como Va”, and stop after the first few bars while (presumably) the teacher fussed at people. I have forever associated the opening of that song with delivering and receiving writing critique.

[links] Link salad waves good-bye to Lisa

In Kentucky, a Family at the Center of the Earth — Jerry Bransford remembers the short day trips his family used to make to Mammoth Cave, half an hour away from their home in Glasgow, Ky. His father would tell him stories about how his family first came to know the cave as slaves but eventually became famous guides, starting a legacy that would last four generations.

Should AGs Ignore Laws They Don’t Like? — I was living in Virginia in 2006, know one of the sponsors of the ban on gay marriage, and fully understand – as you do much better than I – the bigotry and discriminatory intent behind that and these other state constitutional amendments. In fact, it is entirely possible that the sheer number of these referendums and the animus behind them exposed to the vast majority of straight Americans, who may not have thought that much about their impact on real people. Over time, I think straight Americans who voted against gay marriage came to see that they were aiding and abetting bullies and hurting real people.

Paralyzed GOP Lawmaker On Medicaid Opposes Medicaid Expansion — Meet the paralyzed Arkansas state Rep. who is voting against Medicaid expansion even though he has received more than $1 million of Medicaid funded hospitalization and rehabilitation and continues to be on Medicaid. He’s says the potential new recipients don’t work hard enough and probably just want to abuse prescription drugs.

Settled Science — 1 in 4 Americans isn’t down with heliocentricity. Because science is a cult, man. Where the priesthood of knowledge doesn’t permit alternative views. Your opinion is just as valid as some longhair Ph.D. who’s spent decades in research. Right?

5 years later, here’s how the tea party changed politics — For better or worse, the coming together of frustrated conservatives fearing American ruin due to rising debt has altered the national discussion to raise the profile of people and policies previously relegated to the right-wing fringe. That’s an awfully kind description of a political movement far better characterized by its arrant racism and proud, willful ignorance. Because really, if these people were motivated by deficit issues, where the hell were they when a white conservative named George W. Bush held office and ran up the highest deficits in history? They didn’t get mad until there was a black Democrat to blame. A GOP astroturf operations from the beginning, the Tea Party has never had a shred of intellectual or political credibility except as gifted to them by Your Liberal Media.

“Stand Your Ground” Nation — America used to value the concept of retreat. Now we just shoot. The paranoid bullies with their guns are winning.

One-Third Of Millennials Who Left Their Religion Did It Because Of Anti-Gay Policies: Survey — I know from listening to American religious leaders that Jesus’ teachings on homosexuality are far more prominent and important in the New Testament than His teachings on ministering to the poor, or feeding the hungry, or hypocrisy, or love of self and neighbor. Just look how many verses are devoted to each of those topics, after all. He preached constantly on the gay menace. Wait, what?

There Are Two Christian Right Movies Called ‘Persecuted’ Coming Out This Year — We’ve written quite a bit about the Religious Right’s conviction that conservative Christians in the U.S. are facing religious persecution through things like gay rights and the expansion of contraception access. Well, in case we needed a confirmation that this is in fact the direction of the right-wing zeitgeist, it turns out that are several movies coming out this year about the supposed oppression of Christians in America. And two of them have the same title: “Persecuted.” (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Fox’s Tucker Carlson: It’s “Fascism” For Businesses To Have To Treat Gay Customers Equally — Carlson’s attempts to distinguish between refusing to provide services related to a gay wedding and refusing to serve gay people in general ignore the substance of the bill. New York University constitutional law professor Kenji Yoshino has noted that the measure is broadly written enough that it would allow any individual or business owner to refuse services to any gay person as long as he or she contended that providing services would burden his or her religious beliefs. So I guess we’ll have to carry gay/straight cards, as well as religious IDs?

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes divisive bill seen as anti-gay — “Seen as” anti-gay? “Flatly intended to be” anti-gay is the simple truth. And I am amazed at this veto, given that the Religious Right never backs down on anything. Would have been nice if she’d vetoed the bill because it is profoundly unConstitutional and against everything American values stand for, rather than due to the economic backlash, but I guess morality is where you find it when you’re a Republican governor in a conservative state.

Dick Cheney Broke US Military, now blames Obama for Cuts — Oh, come on. It’s all Obama’s fault. You can’t blame Cheney for anything. The last Republican to bear any responsibility whatsoever for their destructive acts in office was Richard Nixon. Reagan’s teflon coat is still ubiquitous among GOP pols.

Why I left the GOP — My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way. I think this shows why Republicans put so much effort into “creat[ing] our own reality,” into fostering distrust of liberals, experts, scientists, and academics, and why they won’t let a campaign “be dictated by fact-checkers” (as a Romney pollster put it). It explains why study after study shows — examples here, here, and here – that avid consumers of Republican-oriented media are more poorly informed than people who use other news sources or don’t bother to follow the news at all. Waking up to a fuller spectrum of reality has proved long and painful. (Via shsilver.)

A License to Discriminate — There are 17 states where it is legal for same-sex couples to marry, and there is no evidence that the accelerating progress toward equality has compromised anyone’s freedom to worship or hold religious beliefs. Unfortunately, that has not stopped religious and social conservatives from pressing lawmakers in various states to enact noxious measures to give businesses and individuals the broad right to deny services to same-sex couples in the name of protecting religious liberty.

Senators on SB1062: “We made a mistake” — A trio of Arizona state senators urged Gov. Jan Brewer to veto a controversial “religious freedom” bill on Monday, just days after all three cast votes in favor of the proposal that opponents say will legalize discrimination. These unAmerican conservative jerks don’t even have the balls to stand proudly for the same bigoted hate they were happy to vote in for relative anonymity a week ago? Poor widdle babies, facing consequences for their profoundly destructive actions. Such accountability rarely happens to conservatives, of course. I suppose this is progress, but it would have been a lot more progress not to embrace such a hideously immoral piece of GOP vote pandering in the first place.

Arizona Confronting Awkward Realization That Gay People Have Money, Buy Stuff — Acknowledging that her vote for the anti-gay law might have been calamitous for the state’s economy, Ms. Foyler placed the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of one group: the gays themselves. “How was I supposed to know what gay people do with their money, etc., when I don’t personally know any gay people?” she asked. “I’m sorry, but it was up to the gays to tell us.” (Via Lisa Costello.)

Saving the Planet One Tiny Satellite at a Time — A Silicon Valley startup is turning its technical acumen and passion for space into an innovative venture that uses a fleet of relatively inexpensive, tiny satellites to take non-stop pictures of Earth.

Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism — Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state. Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Yep, American Christianists are never under any obligation to obey that pesky “bearing false witness” commandment, are they? (Via EK.)

The Republicanization of the United States: Becoming a “Can Do Nation” Again — These are all signs of the “Republicanization” of America, folks. It’s the result of constantly cutting and cutting, without any regard to what we need or want as a people, as well as the “can’t do” spirit that imbues everything the Republican Party stands for. The current incarnation of the GOP has as its main theme that government can’t work, and it proves that every chance they get. And after 34 years of it, it’s time to say, “Enough!”

Texas school board approves all but one science text book — The exception is authored by someone who testified against Intelligent Design. This is actually progress. Though I am mortally tired of educational policy being dictated by willful idiots who think The Flintstones was a documentary.

Japan’s Yankee genius, the greatest scientist you’ve never heard of — Ovshinsky created a hatful of world-changing innovations, many of which threatened the dominance of America’s great new invention: the transistor. US corporate interests rubbished his work and he ended up licensing his technologies to a few small Japanese companies. You might know their names: Sharp, Canon, Sony, Matsushita… (Via David Goldman.)

Penn State to pay $59.7 million to 26 over Sandusky — Given the size of Pemn State’s endowment and budget, this is just a slap on the wrist. Big football really is more important that raped children. Remember that Sandusky wasn’t a lone rogue, but was rather protected by university officials due to his status as a football coach. Enjoy your next big game, sports fans.

Prevalence of Household Gun Ownership Linked to Child Gun Shot Wounds — here are approximately 7,500 child hospitalizations and 500 in-hospital deaths each year due to injuries sustained from guns. In an abstract presented Oct. 27 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, researchers also identified a link between the percentage of homes with guns and the prevalence of child gunshot injuries. Wow, I sure feel safer with all those guns in responsible hands. Don’t you? How about the kids in your life? Ask any conservative: 7,500 kids shot every year is a small price to pay for theoretical defense of essential liberties.

The right way to make a federal budget — It’s OK to spend trillions on a war we should never have waged in Iraq and to provide huge tax breaks for billionaires and multinational corporations. But in the midst of very difficult economic times, we just can’t afford to protect the most vulnerable people in our country. That’s [the Republican] view. I disagree.

The Big Kludge — A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Welcome to conservative America. Too bad for those of us in the reality-based community.

John Roberts And Obama Face Off Over Campaign Finance — Again — The chief justice is protective of the court’s reputation and tends to prefer incremental conservative changes to sweeping shifts. Roberts? In what fucking universe? The only reason the Chief Justice isn’t universally understood as a right wing ideologue who’s abandoned all intellectually honest jurisprudence and Constitutionality in favor of naked partisanship is that he sits next to Justices Scalia and Thomas. Those two ass clowns make Joe McCarthy look like a model of prudent bipartisanship. History is going to be very, very unkind to the Roberts Court, unless of course it’s written by Palinites. Which is clearly Roberts’ goal.

George Washington University misrepresented admissions and financial aid policy for years — The University admitted publicly for the first time Friday that it puts hundreds of undergraduate applicants on its waitlist each year because they cannot pay GW’s tuition. Administrators now say the admissions process has always factored in financial need. But that contradicts messaging from the admissions and financial aid offices that, as recently as Saturday, have regularly attested that the University remained need-blind. Classy. Very classy.

One Big Problem With Heritage’s New Obamacare Study — The conservative Heritage Foundation released last week a new report on insurance premiums under Obamacare, and the conclusion was that favorite of conservative talking points: people are going to pay more for insurance under Obamacare. Only the foundation left out one key variable in the equation, one that undermines their conclusion that “individuals in most states will end up spending more on the exchanges.” As always with conservatives, they cannot win the on the merits, so they flat out lie. It’s a good strategy for them, because people remember the lie, not the later mumbled retraction, if it even ever occurs.

Inhofe: Obamacare would have killed me because of ‘my age’ — So if this is news, how come the media doesn’t report on the thousands of people like me who would be dead if the GOP got its way and repealed Obamacare? The ACA’s lifting of spending caps is what has kept me in treatment at all. Not only that, Inhofe is either lying about how Obamacare works or seriously confused. Given that he’s a Republican, I know which one I believe.

The real reason that 500,000 people died in Iraq — This comment from the Bush White House will make you ashamed to be an American, and a human being. Unless you’re a Republican, in which case you’ll likely approve, just like you have all along.

How Texas’ Voter ID Laws Affect Women — Susan B. Anthony once said, “No self-respecting woman would wish or work for the success of a party which ignores her political rights.” It’s times like these that one has to wonder how there can be a single woman left supporting the Republican Party as it goes out of its way to deny minorities and women their constitutional rights.

Texas Judge Quits GOP Over Social Issues, Shutdown — As the smallest minds continue to make the loudest noise in the Republican Party, true leaders will be driven by their principles and values to become Texas Democrats,” he said in the statement. Wow is that well put. America surely needs a conservative party for the sake of political balance, but not the Christianist, hate-fueled, reality-denying freakshow that the GOP has become. (For that matter, American needs a liberal party, too. The current Democrats are essentially Richard Nixon’s GOP, and everyone else in the political mainstream has run to the right: that redefinition of the political center is the ultimate victory of Ronald Reagan, and the ultimate punishment this country has had to endure for the sake of the senile old fraud’s success.)